The Position of Regional Leaderships on the Opening Policy of Xinjiang (Late 1980s — Early 1990s)

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, almost all spheres of life have undergone positive changes in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region and various reforms have been actively carried out. The most important were the economic transformations that relied on the development of market agriculture, based on personal initiative, the search for new markets and support for related industries. The success of the coastal cities of China, which were located in the East of the country, showed additional chance for the border areas in the West. In Xinjiang, this issue became central to the social and political life of the autonomous region at the turn of the 1980s-1990s. The party secretary Song Hanliang and head of the government of the XUAR Timur Davamet supported a broad interpretation of the policy to open and allow the development of trade attraction of investments from the Arab world, and the exchange of technologies with the countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The current international situation was fully conducive to the opening of Xinjiang: relations with the USSR were restored, the imbalance of the economy in the countries of socialism in favor of heavy industry gave the opportunity to the development of light industry in XUAR. But China's Central authorities opened border areas only for trade. Two reasons influenced this limited decision: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, and the sharp rise of ethnic contradictions in the XUAR. Nevertheless, the XUAR authorities were able to develop the tactics of" two lines", which allowed them to actively explore the markets of Central Asia and the CIS.